Honestly, I think every candidate, including those I like, should be subjected to this level of vetting during the primaries. Obama was elected by people who practically declared it a hate-crime to talk about and explore his past. Let’s not do the same thing again, on our side.

Some people have noticed and asked me why I am so aggressively critical of Rand Paul as a potential candidate, and I think it’s only fair that I give an explanation. I’ve made it no secret that I have preferred candidates in this race, but that really isn’t the reason I am so actively interested in pointing our Paul’s deficits (even as compared to several other potential candidates who I see as weak or not preferable: Jeb, Cruz, Christie etc.). The real reason:

Back when Obama started running in 2007, I noticed a concerning phenomenon where he would say things that conflicted with his past positions but a lot of voters and the media refused to challenge them. These new positions clearly weren’t his real views, but they were perceived as such by many uninformed voters. I actively tried to tell my moderate Jewish friends that Obama was not pro-Israel…

The President recently gave an interview to NPR in which he explained the reasoning behind the dealframework whatever-it-was reached with Iran over its nuclear program. Most analysts concentrated on Obama’s comments about the possible situation in the years just after the ten-year period (1) expires:

Under the framework announced last week, Iran would be kept at least one year away from a bomb for the first decade of the deal, Obama said as he sought to sell the deal to skeptics. Yet that constraint would stay in place only for 10 years, at which point some restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities would be eased.

“Essentially, we’re purchasing for 13, 14, 15 years assurances that the breakout is at least a year,” Obama said in an NPR News interview. “And then in years 13 and 14, it is possible that those breakout times would have been much shorter. But at that point we have much better ideas about what it is that their program involves.

Analysts have pointed out several legitimate reasons for concern: Iran has already said it will deploy improved centrifuges, meaning they can generate more enriched uranium even with the fewer devices allowed under the agreement. Iran will not permit inspection of military facilities, meaning all sorts of secret work could go on in those. (And what happens if Fordow and other sites are declared “military?”) They are not giving up their ballistic missile program. And though Obama and Kerry assure us that sanctions can be reapplied in the event Iran is caught cheating (not “if,” but “when,” in my opinion), the fact is that sanctions would take months of negotiations with our allies (and the Russians and Chinese) to reapply –if they can be reapplied– and then about another year to actually bite. Under Obama’s forecast, then Iran would then have plenty of time to build a bomb even after the ten-year wait, just by having everything else ready to go.

So, yes, there are many, many major problems with this agreement no one agrees on. ( I pointed out a few others here)

But there’s another flaw few seem to be commenting on, even though, if true, it renders the whole process not just meaningless, but a farce. From that same AP article, see if you can spot the problem:

Breakout time refers to how long it would take to build a bomb if Iran decided to pursue one full-bore — in other words, how long the rest of the world would have to stop it. U.S. intelligence officials estimate Iran’s breakout time is currently two to three months.

I made it too easy, didn’t I?

Hello? Anyone home? The arrangement reached in Lausanne is supposed to lead to a final deal in –ahem– roughly two months. Who here doesn’t think Iran will find ways to stretch that to three, four, or five or more months? It will be easy, because the Obama administration wants a deal more than a junkie wants his next fix, and Tehran knows this. And yet our intelligence services estimate they are no more than three months from a nuclear weapon, should they give the final order to build one?

Who the hell gives a damn about ten years from now when we’re talking potentially of a matter of weeks?

The Obama administration has conceded that Iran will get a bomb, and these negotiations are just a clown show to keep us distracted until it’s a fait accompli.

Here’s some of what I wrote about this messed-up approach back in 2009.

…our pre-paid health care system is somewhat akin to going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant. We have an incentive to over-consume since we’ve already paid. Except this analogy is insufficient. When we go to all-you-can-eat restaurants…

In the above graphic, the zero line from February 2000 has been offset to make it visible. It actually falls right on top of the zero trend line from December 1996.

The title may seem odd since RSS shows no trend for 18 years and 3 months now. The title was triggered by an exchange several years ago in which we were challenged to show there was no warming for 15 years. I promptly showed that to be the case with RSS, but was accused of cherry picking since I went on the other side of the 1998 El Nino. Some one else started on this side of the 1998 El Nino and was accused of not going 15 years. We could not win then. But now we…